Winhill Silence
by magistrate
Summary: Laguna finds his own Heaven and Hell.
1. Fermata in Mistoc Air

_One day he went to Winhill to meet his son, and they sat in an old, old bar and drank something light and traded stories and regrets. Moments later he awoke, and almost wept that it had been a dream._

_The next day he woke up again, and wasn't quite sure what was the dream any more._

-

Time Compression warped and distorted the Lunatic Pandora like a melting carnival mirror, then broke as fevers broke and returned the world to the usual semblance of order. Squall was gone, and so was his team--Laguna hadn't watched them go, because it had felt as if his face was twisting into his stomach while his chest was bending up behind his ears and until the distortion passed he had to keep his eyes closed tightly so as not to feel ill. But it seemed as if Time Compression had ripped something out of him, and for the rest of the day he felt light-headed and hollow.

When he walked back into his office there was a letter lying on the desk, even though in electronics-age Esthar there were faster and better ways of getting a message through and he hadn't received paper mail in eight years. He picked it up to read it, and found a script he hadn't seen in far longer than that.

_In restless dreams, I see you.  
Laguna...  
You promised you'd come back for me, but you never did.  
I wonder if you even remember.  
It feels so alone now.  
I'm waiting for you.  
Do you still remember the chapel by the edge of town?  
Or our little room, with the window that overlooks the garden?  
It's broken now, did you know?  
I can't ever seem to get it replaced...  
I miss you.  
I can't bear to think that you might forget.  
I have so many secrets to tell you...  
So many things I need to say.  
I keep hoping you'll come back.  
I might not have another chance..._

The letter was unsigned, ragged and torn at the bottom as if holding a resolution from him by force of cruelty. But the name on the envelope said _Raine_.

It was ridiculous. Raine was dead. Everyone had told him that, over and over until he had felt sicker than Time Compression could ever make him feel.

And even though he kept telling himself that it couldn't be possible, before he knew it he was on his way to Winhill.

-

It was foggy, and the fog was rolling over everything and choking color from the town. Faint whiffs of flower-scent tinged the moisture, but on the whole it was still like breathing warm pea soup.

The town square was empty and silent and shrouded. Once, years and years ago, he had helped Raine arrange flowers there, until he had broken two pots and Raine had sent him off to carry full watering cans instead. There wasn't much harm one could do to a tin pail and spigot--or with one, for that matter.

He walked across the square and was almost surprised not to find shattered clay on the tiles.

No one was out and about, and for such a dismal day he didn't expect it. But there was a crow wheeling somewhere high overhead, and its rough caw broke the silence and echoed. Laguna tried to see it--a black shape gliding through a monotony of grey--but was unable to.

He walked across the vacant square to an all-too-familiar door, and hesitated just before he knocked. What was he supposed to say? _Hello, I'm here looking for Raine_ would be, in _this_ town, tantamount to insult. Even with the letter--

_--I'm waiting for you--_

--it would be hard to believe. Impossible, even.

_--I might not have another chance._

Without thinking further, he knocked.

The door opened slightly, hinges creaking in disrepair as it swung from no other force than his fist. The wood was warping and discoloring with age--but Laguna hardly noticed it.

"Hello?"

He pushed the door open, slipping into the bar. The air was heavy and stale, dry against the fog now creeping in and curling at the floor. There was a thin sheen of dust on the tables and countertops.

"...hello, anyone? ...Raine?"

He closed the door behind him, looking around. Little light filtered in through the windows--they had been covered with butcher's paper, though where it had torn hairline cracks in the glass were visible. What had happened?

"...there's no one in here?"

No one answered.

He walked to the stairs in the back of the room, noting with some concern that they were splintering where the carpet had been worn away. Up those stairs was a thin wooden door, something that had been cheap to install and did enough to keep the bar noise out. Behind that door was a room that had always been enough for everything else.

_--our little room that overlooks the garden_...

He walked up the stairs, listening to them creak underneath him, and knocked on the door.

It was a hollow noise, and nothing answered it.

He knocked harder, and then tried the knob. It was unlocked and turned easily--but the door wouldn't open. He rattled it, shook it, pushed and shoved and finally _kicked_ the thing, but it wouldn't move more than a millimeter. Something had jammed it resolutely in place.

It wasn't until he had given up on the old house that he noted the bolts in the hinges and at the top and bottom of the doorframe.

It wasn't until he had stared dumbly in surprise that he noticed the shell of rust covering the bolts.

It wasn't until he had wondered who in hell would want to do such a thing that he got around to wondering _why_.

"...Raine?" He was quiet, voice hardly above a whisper and expecting no response. when none came, he turned and walked back down the stairs and out of the house.

-

The fog hadn't lifted--not that he had expected it to. But there was someone in the center of the Town Square, form nothing more than an indefinite silhouette. He was standing slightly hunched over, arms limp by his side, looking back and forth as if lost.

"Excuse me!" Laguna walked toward him, waving. "Do you live here?"

The man looked over, but said nothing. Laguna was deciding he didn't much like the silence of the town.

"I was just wondering if you knew what happened to the woman who used to live in that house," he asked, waving a hand back at the bar. "I was just wondering, 'cause..."

He trailed off.

The man hand turned toward him, and was limping closer. But he wasn't solidifying as he came through the fog--instead, the fog seemed to be thickening around him.

"...uh," Laguna said, and took a step back.

A noise was coming from him--something like static, something like thin, ragged breath, something like words. The fog was dark and viscous around him.

"Wh--who are you?" Laguna kept backing up, and the form kept limping--slowly, painfully, jerking and shuddering like a dying man, and the mindless babble didn't stop.

It was a soldier.

Barely visible under the coat of mist, his helmet jutted from between armored shoulders. Everything was rusted, jagged and broken--the gloves were tattered and moth-eaten, stained with mud and blood. They reached out to him, shuddering with the rising, inscrutable sound.

Laguna caught the man's shoulders as he pitched forward, and was rewarded by cold fingers at his neck--scratching and tearing, pulling and seeking, pounding against his jugular and thrashing against his voicebox--and it was all Laguna could do to push him away, fighting against unholy strength. The soldier collapsed like a rope mannequin, hitting the ground limply and painfully--and began to writhe, hips and shoulders and joints snapping back and forth with a mechanical rapidity. He sprung back up, twisting and uncoiling in a way that defied bone mass--it was far too serpentine.

Laguna reached behind him, fingers searching through the heavy air until they came into contact with something--a shovel left out, worn wooden handle cold and clammy. The soldier walked toward him, undaunted--until Laguna swung the shovel at him, impacting the helmet with enough force to snap the handle and send the metal shovel head clanging to the ground.

The soldier fell, and stopped moving.

Shaken, Laguna stepped carefully around it--staring down, trying to divine anything about it. An identity, some sense of what it was doing--

--what it might have done. As far as he could tell, it was--it _had been_--the only thing alive here.

...he was hardly going to get any answers out of it _now_.

The shovel was broken beyond easy repair. Disgusted, he threw the useless handle away; it clattered against a pristine picket fence, swallowed by the fog to lie unseen on the cobblestone.

The man's helmet was smashed, caved in and ruined. No blood leaked from between the slivers and splinters, but it seemed as if the fog was a bit darker around them.

-

-

There was a figure in a black coat making its way toward the long downhill path that lead to the stream, and even before he had noticed the fur ruff and the distinctive way he held himself Laguna knew who it was.

"Hey! S--Squall!"

Squall didn't turn around.

Laguna rushed after him, trying not to lose sight of his son in the fog. What Squall was doing _there_, at _that_ time, was anyone's guess--

--then again, if he had expected Time compression to pick him up and take him Hyne knew where, _here_ was as reasonable a place to come back to as any other.

He hurried, nearly tripping over rough patches on the sidewalk and hidden roots beneath the fog, rushing forward even when the object of his pursuit had faded so far it could no longer be seen.

-

He made it down the slope in a hurried scramble, hopping the last couple of steps to land on smooth cobbling. Squall was sitting on a rock by the stream, his back to the road that lead through the main road of the town. He was wrapped in the fog, unmoving--it was hard to tell if he was breathing, if he was alive. Laguna hesitated, careful.

"Squall?"

Neither response nor motion.

"...son?"

He turned his head slowly, empty blue eyes framed by long strands of copper-brown hair. And it was _almost_ Squall's face--but not quite.

So _close_, though...

"...no. You're not."

Not-Squall stood up, walking over until he was within arm's reach. Laguna took a step back, and then wondered why. "Do I look like someone?"

"My son," Laguna explained. "You look exactly like him!"

Not-Squall tilted his head a little, distain edging his expression. "My _name_ is Sukaru," he snapped.

Laguna raised both hands, palms out in an apologetic gesture. "Sorry. I guess this place... heh. It's just getting to me."

Sukaru leaned forward, staring at Laguna's face. "You confused, or something?"

Laguna took another pace backward, ramming his back inadvertently against the dry-dirt wall behind him. "Maybe, I--I dunno. What happened to the town? Why is it so empty?"

Sukaru smirked, and turned away without answering.

"Wait!" Laguna yelped, putting a hand out to stop the man who was not his son. "Wait. Don't go just yet."

Sukaru glanced back. "What is it?"

"I just--what are _you_ doing here?"

Sukaru frowned, seeming annoyed by his unwanted company. "...I'm looking for someone."

"So am I. My wife. A woman named Raine."

"There's a grave up on the hill by that name."

The self-same hill that couldn't be seen, cloaked in the fog that wouldn't dissipate, and Laguna felt a tattered old rhyme winding its way through his skull. _This is the hill, all covered with fog/That buried the girl with the golden dog..._ He used to read Ellone stories from a thick book of rhymes, and wondered if that had been one of them. "Yeah. Raine died, seventeen years ago." It was easy--_too _easy--to tell the stranger this.

Sukaru looked over at him, top lip curling. "Then why are you looking for her?"

"Well, I--I got this _letter_..." Laguna trailed off, wondering how he was supposed to explain something that didn't even make sense to _him_. "It said it was from her."

"A dead woman can't write a letter."

Laguna found himself agreeing. "Maybe, but I still have to try to find her." He looked over at his companion, trying not to see _Squall_ in that face.

"I don't think you will."

"I still have to _try_. Who are _you_ looking for?"

"Someone. Anyone."

"Did you lose someone here?"

"_That's not your business_."

The vehemence of the words took Laguna back. "...I'm sorry," he apologized. "I just thought maybe we could look together."

Sukaru sat down, staring at the stream again. He didn't say a word.

Laguna sighed. "Well, okay then. ...hey, I'll see you around, okay?"

Sukaru didn't respond.

Laguna turned around, walking away. The man was certainly unfriendly, he reflected--

"_WAIT!_"

He jumped what he thought _had_ to be a meter into the air.

"What are you doing?"

Laguna shook his head. "I was going to look for--"

"You were going to _leave _me here!" Sukaru's eyes were wild and frightening, accusing and condemning. "Weren't you? _Weren't_ you?"

Laguna put up his hands again, warding off an attack Sukaru hadn't physically made. "I'm sorry! I'm--"

"You were gonna just _leave _me here? With all these monsters around?"

"No, I just thought--"

"I look like your son, right?"

Laguna stared. _He's not Squall. He's **not**_. "Yeah."

"You love him, don't you?"

The question was so unexpected, Laguna only stammered.

Sukaru tilted his head to the side, staring at and through him. "Or... maybe you hate him?"

"Of course not!"

"So I'll come with you." He stood up. "Right. We can look together."

Laguna should have been happy that he was no longer alone. Instead, when Sukaru stood up and walked back up the path toward the town, all he could think was how his words hurt when they shouldn't have.

_You were gonna just leave me here, weren't you?_

_**Weren't** you?_

-

The fog began to cool.


	2. Room of Angel

The laughter of lost children was filtering through the fog, and Laguna didn't know where it could be coming from. Sukaru, walking silently beside him, didn't seem to notice. Nor did he notice the chill breeze that was beginning to wend through the humid air, nor did he notice Laguna, trying not to stare and failing. The silence, but for laughter, was as thick and unnatural as an illness. 

Something moved, low along the ground like a slinking dog, hissing and scuttling at the edge of the town square. Then it disappeared into the mist with the thin noise of static.

Laguna shuddered. "What happened to this place?"

"What happens to any place?" Sukaru was unconcerned. "Something. Maybe it was a war. Maybe people just didn't want to live here any more. Maybe it was the monsters."

"Those monsters--" Laguna's eyes followed the edge of the square, where visibility finally faded into fog. "What _are_ they?"

"Monsters. Nothing special." Sukaru kicked a stone, sending it skipping across the ground. "They get into the city now and again, and no one's here to fight them off. All the men went off to war, and they never came back. They're all dead now--or they wish they were. Sleeping somewhere quiet. Somewhere far away."

"I saw a soldier here--" Laguna began.

"There aren't any soldiers any more." Sukaru shot him a significant look, but said nothing more. An uneasy silence fell, and Sukaru looked away.

Laguna's stomach rumbled, and he put a hand to it. "It's been so long since I ate anything," he remarked. "I'm getting hungry."

"Then why don't you eat?"

"Eat? What's there to eat in this place?"

"Don't you know? There's a bar up by the Town Square." He turned back, staring at Laguna with intent eyes.

Laguna did know. It was the same bar above which Raine had lived, and he could still remember the food that came from behind that counter. "Yeah, but--"

"But what? You said you're hungry, aren't you?" Sukaru poked his nose forward again, scrutinizing Laguna's face.

"It's just--is it all right?"

"Why wouldn't it be? No one's here." Sukaru jammed his hands into his pockets and walked off, leaving Laguna to follow him.

"The woman who used to live in that bar--"

"Was your Raine? Yeah. I know."

"How? Did you know her?"

"I knew of her."

"How?" Laguna was hurrying not to lose him--Sukaru was shorter than he was, but he made good use of those legs. "_How_ did you know her?"

"I knew _of_ her. What's the matter? You think that's _uncommon_ in a town like this?"

Everyone knew Raine. Everyone _loved_ Raine, and that made it so much easier for everyone to _hate_ him. "...no, I guess not."

"Come on. Keep up."

"I'm coming--I'm coming." Sukaru was at the door and through it before Laguna had crossed the square--fighting an irrational twinge of fear, Laguna sprinted the rest of the way.

Sukaru was already at the cupboards, opening them and closing them in a search for dishware. "They say the best food comes from places like this," he said. "The very best."

The door at the top of the stairs was swinging loosely on its hinges.

Laguna stared up at it, Sukaru all but forgotten. _Raine's room--**our** room..._

"I'll be right back," he said, pushing away from the table as Sukaru rummaged behind the counter, bringing out boxes and cans with a deftness that shouldn't have come so naturally to him. "I just-- I have to see something."

Sukaru grunted an acknowledgment.

Laguna walked up the stairs, and they groaned and protested beneath him. Even the noise Sukaru made on the floor below seemed to fade away to nothing as he approached the door.

The bolts had been removed, but with impossible skill--there was neither rust nor hole to show that they had ever been there. The door moved slightly, a soft breeze tickling past it and brushing against Laguna's collar. With a hesitation he wished not to feel, he reached out, opened it, and stepped past.

The room was empty, and he looked around it with a disappointment that bit deeper than he would have expected.

"See anything?" Sukaru called up--and, halfhearted, Laguna mumbled a reply. Sukaru likely couldn't hear it. Laguna didn't have the presence of mind to notice or care. The room was too silent, too empty.

There was a red dress--a red dress with red-ribbon straps lacing up and down the space where shoulders should have been--and it was hung so perfectly against the window that it danced as if it was alive when the breeze came in.

The fog was so thick outside that window that it was hard to see over to the next _house_, let alone any further. It wound into the room, spirals and tendrils, and disappeared.

Faint afterscents of perfume lingered, on the very edge of fading.

The back window was shut, though the glass was cracked. There was a chair by it, angled precisely to afford the best view out and across the modest back yard.

--_the window that overlooks the garden--_

He walked to it.

The wind was howling outside the window, but the fog curled with no more speed or purpose than funereal incense. The garden was invisible, cloaked in an infinity of grey.

His thigh bumped into an endtable as he looked in vain for something, any visual interruption in the fog. Jumping, he turned to it.

The table was covered in newspaper clippings--dusty, fragile and yellowed with age. With the utmost care, he picked up the first clipping in the file and blew across it. The dust billowed upward, mingling with the humid air.

It was an obituary--a monthly one, noting dates and causes of deaths through the month, whatever month it had been. There was no indication. Very few of the names were names he recognized.

Too many people had died that month. It didn't take him long to realize that. One on the third, one on the seventh, three on the ninth, eight on the tenth... the numbers grew and grew, skipping through the later days. And next to each one was written a word he could almost make out--_Buchubuchu_ or _Bunbun_--that tugged at his memory but lead it nowhere.

He put the article down. It was torn off at the end, just like the letter--half of the last name was visible, and began _Suk--_. A part of him didn't want to know what followed after it, though he couldn't quite explain the fear.

His hand accidentally brushed against the chair, and he paused.

The seat was warm--faintly, the sort of lingering temperature that clung to things recently abandoned, reminding of pliant skin and the warm blood beating beneath it.

His hand began to tremble.

There was an old, old phonograph Raine had purchased from an antique shop on the bed, tarnished and cracking. It had never worked, and he was trying not to believe it was whispering static.

His hand wouldn't stop shaking.

He began to back away, scanning the room for a danger he couldn't place, couldn't name. He backed into the door as a gust of _something_ swung it open, snapping against his shoulders like a whip's sharp reproof--he spun, and his hand caught its edge sharply. A splinter broke loose and dug in, tearing across the skin and spilling bright blood.

He took the stairs two at a time, collapsing on the last one as the door slammed shut behind him. Only when he had caught his breath, gulping the dusty air, did he notice that Sukaru was gone.

-

There were only so many places in the old house to hide. Sukaru had never come up the stairs--that was obvious. And he wasn't in the bar or the food closet, and the door to the cellar was jammed as tightly as the door to Raine's room had been bolted--though no bolts, suspicious or innocuous, graced this door, and even the lock seemed to be missing. But the front door was open and creaking.

Sukaru had set the table before he had vanished--it was a picture-perfect setting, as if he had torn it from a dishware magazine. For a moment Laguna thought that he had gone out to collect something--some ingredient that they were missing--but the thought was quickly dismissed as ludicrous. Where would he get it from? Why would he say _nothing _before leaving?

He walked to the door, staring out into the fog. "Sukaru?" he called, and his voice echoed in the moisture without anyone to answer it. Hesitating, he stepped out into the fog.

It curled around him, pulling him in as he moved. Unwilling to move from sight of the familiar doorway, he made a pitiful half-circuit around the square--seeing nothing that could be a human form. With another fruitless hail he gave up and stepped back inside, pulling the door shut with a shudder and a sigh.

The one companion he had found in this dreary place had vanished. No trace of him remained.

One of the place settings had been smashed into fragments on the table.

With a kind of weary numbness, Laguna stepped carefully to it, but there was no indication of what had happened so suddenly. The fine china was ruined, far beyond repair.

It seemed like everything was falling apart, these days...

He made his way to the counter, picking up the boxes and tins Sukaru had left out and carrying them to the table. He sat and ate in silence, and the food had the flavor and consistency of dust.

-

-

The food, for all its shortcomings, was filling and heavy, and Laguna found himself drifting off as he finished it. His head was growing heavier and heavier, and it seemed like someone had shut off the controls to the muscles in his neck--they relaxed and his head lolled forward, all without his conscious volition. He had to keep pulling himself back from the edge of sleep, and it crept like mist around him--like the pale patterns of light and lesser light on the butcher's paper covering the windows, like the slow creak of the ancient door. He could imagine sunlight filtering in through the windows, motes of dust hanging too lazy to fall. Honey-golden and warm. Not like this.

He remembered falling asleep on days like that at the table by the windows, with a pencil and a pad of paper, cobbling something together for submission to something or other--scratching it out and beginning again, over and over until the warmth of the day caught up with him and lulled him to sleep. He remembered watching the sun slip away, fading everything through brittle amber light into darkness. He remembered going up the stairs, barely awake enough to pull back the covers and tumble into bed with--

He jerked himself back up. For seventeen years he had been given an overabundance of time to wait and reflect, now was the time to do something. Search. The letter--

The letter was safe in the pocket of his jacket, and he was so inexplicably _tired_. And the world was silent--easily silent enough for sleep.

"I see you didn't wait for me."

Laguna's head snapped up, and he gaped at the person coming in through the front door. "Sukaru! Where have you _been_?"

"It doesn't matter." Sukaru stared at the smashed place setting, frowning despondently. "...it doesn't matter. Was the food good?"

Laguna glanced away self-consciously as Sukaru settled into the chair across from him, folding his arms across the sharp bits of china. "...I think it would have been better if I knew how to cook."

The halfhearted jest didn't elicit anything from Sukaru. "I see."

"Sukaru?"

"Yeah?"

Laguna glanced at him, searching his face one more time. How many times had he dreamed about a face just like that one? "What _are_ you doing, here?"

"I'm looking for my parents," Sukaru said dispassionately.

Laguna suppressed a shudder. "What were they like?"

"Tell the truth, I don't really remember them. One died a long time ago, and the other I never knew." Sukaru shrugged it off, pale eyes staring into the distance. "It's all right, though. I don't think they really loved me, anyway."

"Nonsense!" Laguna rubbed the back of his neck, distinctly uneasy. "How ever heard of something like that?"

"Did _your_ parents love you?"

"Of course they did! I remember this one time--"

"_I don't need to hear about **your** past_," Sukaru snarled, startling Laguna into silence.

There was silence for some time.

-

-

It was nearing evening when Sukaru suggested that they go to the Mausoleum.

Laguna was only half-listening, absorbed in his own thoughts, and he hadn't been expecting Sukaru to speak. As a result, he didn't really hear what had been said until Sukaru nudged his shoulder. "_Laguna_."

"Hm? Wha?" Laguna started and blinked, shaking off the torpor that seemed to be seeping into him. "...sorry. What?"

"I said we should go to the Church," Sukaru repeated, flat gaze looking all too lifeless in the ambient light.

"Why?"

Sukaru looked tired. "Because you want to know what happened here," he said. "They keep records there. Prayers and sermons and births and deaths. You might find something there."

Laguna nodded, killing time more than considering. "Think you'll find anything?"

Sukaru looked away, shrugging with one shoulder. "Nah. ...I don't think there's anything for me to find, really."

"Then why are you here?"

"Why are _you_ here?"

Laguna looked down. "...oh. Yeah."

"Yeah."

"...which way is it?"

Sukaru stood. "Follow me."

With the fog and the gathering dark, the threat of losing Sukaru was a very real one--Laguna hurried to keep up as Sukaru walked, without needing to look or check his way, through quiet streets and weed-choked paths. The scuttle of unseen monsters--a familiar noise, now--sounded sporadically about them--sometimes behind, sometimes before, sometimes just off to the side where faint shadows and shapeless forms sat sullenly in the mists. Sukaru never wavered.

They walked what seemed to be too far a distance, and Laguna began to wonder where it was that Sukaru was leading him.

But finally, when the only glow that reminded of sun was beginning to sink from the air, Sukaru stepped up a few stairs and pressed one hand into the banded wood that composed the church's door. "Here," he whispered, voice low with reverence, and pushed it open to slip inside.

The church was old and decrepit. Someone had made a valiant effort to patch it up, keep it going, but it was still old--the wooden slats of the pews were warped by the elements, the glass of the windows was fogged and uneven, and the dried flowers in the bouquet at the altar lent only a faded brush of color to the tired palette of the room.

"You'll want to go down," Sukaru said, pointing toward an alcove behind the altar. The first few steps--marble-plated--were visible even from the door.

"Why? What's down there?"

"Death records."

Laguna swallowed. "A--all right. ...are you coming with me?"

Sukaru didn't respond immediately, and Laguna couldn't figure out why. He glanced back at his guide, not knowing what to expect.

Hesitation was stamped plainly on Sukaru's face, a look stealing elements from fear and reluctance but imitating neither--he regarded the doorway with a sad wariness, distrust hazing over his features.

"...you don't have to," Laguna said lamely, wanting nothing less than to be left alone in this place. "I mean, if you don't want to."

"No." Sukaru took a breath. "No. I'll come with you. Follow me."

He stepped forward, crossing the floor quickly and starting down the stairs. Laguna, once again, rushed to keep up--Sukaru moved quickly, and Laguna didn't see how exactly he managed it. He was paying more attention to going quickly that for a moment he neglected to watch where he was going--and before he knew it, he was engulfed in darkness.

"Whoa!" He ground to a halt, hand out to the wall. It was slick and clammy with thick condensation that did nothing to smooth away the roughhewn unevenness of the stone. "S--Sukaru!"

"I'm here."

Laguna dropped his hand, wiping it on one pant leg and willing his eyes to adjust. "It's... why is it so _dark_?"

"You see it, too?" Sukaru's voice was faint and faraway, and nonetheless caused Laguna to jump. "Don't you know? It's always dark."

"Where are we?"

"The Mausoleum. A lot of these old churches have them."

Laguna felt for a wall, and his hand came in contact with something smooth and dry and curving outward against his palm. "What's a Mauso--muzzo--what's that?"

"It's always like this for me," Sukaru said, and his voice was fainter than ever. There were footsteps in the darkness.

"Wait!" Laguna pushed away from the wall, running uneasily over the broken ground. "Where are you going? Wait for me!"

Footsteps, but no other sound.

Laguna hurried faster, hands out in front of him to feel his way. There was nothing now, only himself and the darkness. Not even a wall interrupted his stumbling progress.

"Sukaru!"

No sound except his own footsteps and his own breathing.

He stopped, held his breath. There was no sound except the rushing of his own blood.

"Sukaru..." he breathed into the silence, and only the silence answered him.


	3. A Stray Child

_I lost him._

He walked out of the stale air of the Mausoleum without really knowing how he had found his way. It was still foggy. It always was.

_He's gone. He just... vanished._

The fog was all but invisible in the darkness.

He stumbled along the paths, rewarded with rough ground and tearing thistles when he strayed. Noises echoed in the gloom, muted by distance and fatigue. They were thin and unimportant beside the spiraling malice of his thoughts.

The town was deep and empty. The rattle of rusted armor on inhuman limbs made it emptier still. It was beginning to get bitterly chill.

His nerves were going numb in the cold, and his feet felt like formless masses of flesh and pressure inside his boots-like corpses' feet, deadened and heavy dragging against the grass. If by chance he touched himself, fingers on the thin cloth of his shirt or carelessly scratching the back of his neck, he felt cold and clammy, moisture beading on everything and soaking in. It was sobering in a way even Sukaru's loss couldn't be-nature's cold sweat on a world afflicted with a horror impossible to voice.

The whimpering rustle on the side of the path was leading him back to the village, and he followed it without thinking. The buildings, quaint and peaceful in daylight, loomed like invisible prophets shrouded in dusk.

He crossed the cobblestones, feeling shards of clay crumble where he stepped, and laid a hand on the door to Raine's bar. Frost had crept along the hinges and the latch; it stuck when he pressed it.

He stared at it with a kind of sick betrayal.

The dust would still be thick on the tables inside, the room above still empty and abandoned. The fog would still curl at the windows, all unseen.

Exhaustion tugged at him, but he didn't know _what_ could compel him to sleep in the presence of that one, indomitable truth. He turned from the house and made his way next door.

Ellone told him once that she didn't have many memories of the house before he had come to it-that past existed in kind of a dim grey shroud, fogged by time and distance. Laguna's memories were much clearer, much more pointed-days and weeks and months stretching across each other, a string of hopeful mornings and restless nights in the same puny bed, the same waking dream he never thought would pass.

He looked once more toward Raine's bar, but saw nothing to call him back.

There was a figure staring at him from the center of the Town Square, and Laguna couldn't tell if it was his imagination or something deeper that allowed him to know it. Certainly, he felt, it could not be his eyes.

It stood stricken, staring as if in hurt disbelief. Laguna shuddered and turned away, pushing open the door and pulling it securely shut behind him.

-

The house hadn't been opened in ages, and the air was bitter and stale.

He took stock of the entryway, resting his shoulders against the solid door. It looked so much the same as it had always looked-a spray of bullet holes on the wall, dust and general disorder in the rest. Papers of some long-forgotten function littered the chairs and piled on the floor. They were yellowing in a shade alltogether too much like decay.

He looked away, and it was only then that it occurred to him that there was light to see by, and he had no idea from where it had come.

It was a pale glow, almost ethereal in the night-it did little to illuminate, seeming only to accent the shadows where it glanced. His first thought was of starlight, but it was too subdued for that-too distant, too resolutely unexalted. The only thing he could compare it to was a lonely lighthouse, pressing against the clouds-a condemned light, exiled and reclusive, that could never beckon but ward off.

He was tired-too tired to shiver at the thought, too tired to fully comprehend it or wonder and the dark threat of his musings. The house was a safe place, each bullet hole old and cooled, and the disorder had lost the frantic tinges of life or violent death and acquired the sad posture of disuse. The carpet on the stairs was the same muted shade as ever, and the picture on the desk was the same as it had always been-Ellone's parents staring solemnly at the camera.

He blinked heavily, as if pressing his eyelids through some viscous liquid. His head was beginning to loll.

The picture on the desk was the same as it always was, Raine, startled and half-turned away from the camera.

He blinked again.

The picture was the same as it had always been, and it was a long empty road leading out of Winhill.

The picture was the same as it has always been, and it was two broken flowerpots in the Town Square.

The picture was the same, and it was Sukaru smiling.

Sukaru smiling.

Smiling.

Sukaru with his face smashed in, dark-tinted fog coiling from his ruined features.

Laguna blinked once more, and wondered vaguely if he was going insane.

-

He made it up the stairs as much by stumbling accident as by design, and a soldier's helmet went rolling down the flight with a hollow _tuk, pa-tuk_ when he inadvertently kicked it. It awakened no more than a brief spark of recognition in his mind before fatigue subsumed it.

He made it across the floor of the room to his old bed blindly, and old bits of plastic and the cardboard covers of children's books groaned where he stepped. He took off his jacket and hung it on the beadhead, sitting heavily on the mattress.

It was dark, and he needed to sleep. He stared dumbly at nothing. He would continue his search for Raine tomorrow-if there were tomorrows in this godforsaken place, if there was even today.

His head was dropping and he rose his hands up to meet it. He cradled his face in his palms, and wondered if the moisture he felt was fog or tears.

No sound came from outside the window. He had helped Ellone hang chimes there, once.

"I want to know what happened here" he murmured into his cupped hands. The house moaned in uncertainty. The stairs creaked in protest.

He fell backward, pulling at the covers and wincing at the holes his fingers kept finding.

"...I want to know _why_..."

The blankets were cold. He shivered.

"_Sukaru!_"

It felt just like he was drifting.

It felt just like he was bleeding and dying, but he was so tired-too, too tired to care.

It felt just like there was a hand on his shoulder, just like there was a weight on the edge of the mattress, just like the room was alive and holding him in gloom. It felt like the room was sleeping, dreaming, trapped in a grey thing that wasn't a nightmare but wasn't anything else either. It felt sad-as if it had always been sad, cold and empty like the halls of the dead.

"Sukaru..."

"What you want here... you can't have it. You know that."

It was so dark in the room, and he was so tired-the bed was pulling him down, pulling him deeper into the grasp of both slumber and the thick old blankets. Compared to that Sukaru was nothing-a ghost, maybe an insistent one, but thin and insubstantial. "Yeah"

"She's dead, Laguna. She died a long time ago." The house moaned softly, long resigned.

"But I got-I have this _letter_"

It was folded neatly, tucked into the right pocket of his jacket-the jacket hung from the headboard. Sukaru reached in and took it, undoing its pressed creases, and Laguna didn't have the mental presence to object. Sukaru's eyes skipped over it, pale shapes without light to show them. Soft like fog, and insubstantial. At length, he sighed, tucking it back into the pocket. "You're chasing shadows, Laguna."

"...maybe." Laguna blinked, half-asleep already. "Sounds like what Kiros would say."

"Kiros would be smart." He knelt by the bedside, resting folded arms on the mattress and resting his chin on his arms. "You _know_ that."

Laguna stretched out his hand, running fingers over Sukaru's face-taking in every curve, every contour-the places where bone pressed up against the skin, the places where he could press. "You look so much like him" he said without seeing.

"I know."

He dropped his hand, pulling it back under the covers. "Are you gonna be here when I wake up" It felt as if he couldn't sleep without knowing it. "I can't-I can't let you disappear again."

"I'll be here."

"Good." Laguna closed his eyes, and sunk deep into a slumber that felt so much like death. Sukaru waited by the bedside, watching.


	4. Betrayal

Morning came with a gradual soft lightening of the fog outside the window, and the dust was tinged a pale silver. One of Ellone's old toysa tiny wheeled rocking-horse with a cracked plastic saddlestood halfway illuminated, long wistful face staring at him as if it remembered happier times. 

The room was empty.

Laguna sat bolt-upright, heavy lethargy of sleep chased away by a sudden, striking fear. "Sukaru?" he called, eyes scouring the room for any trace of him. "_Sukaru!"_

"I'm here," came a voice, floating up the stairs. "I'm right here."

"Thank" Laguna stumbled out of bed, locating his boots and jacket more by blind luck than memory. "...I thought you ran off again."

Sukaru laughedand it was a beautiful sound, light and lilting and generous. "No. I didn't. Never again."

He rammed his feet into boots, his arms into sleeves, and checked to make sure the letter was still therestill resting in the pocket up against the seam, reassuring like a magic charm. It wasit seemed as if it had never been moved.

He chuckled nervously, making his way down the stairs. "I... I dreamed that you were a dream," he confessed. "It was... ah, strange."

"I'm not," Sukaru chuckled. He was hunched over one of the ubiquitous piles of paper, absently organizing them. "Trust meI'm here, Laguna. I'm real."

For a moment, Laguna just watched himunable to place the source of the great relief he felt, unwilling to try lest he inadvertently destroy it. "Did you find anything? ...in the mausoleum?"

Sukaru turned to him, staring with a kind of quiet pain that was enough to stifle him. "...no, Laguna. There was nothing for me to find."

"...I'm sorry," Laguna muttered.

"It doesn't matter anyway," Sukaru said, turning back to his task. He seemed somewhat subdued, nowas if there had been some kind of lingering joy in the room, fragile as a cobweb, that Laguna had brushed away with his question. He looked away.

Such fragile things...

"Are you hungry? I can make something."

Laguna put a hand to his stomach, realizing for the first time that he was. "Yeah, I guess... let's go to the bar, then. We can head over together"

Sukaru turned and smiledwith the same smile Raine graced him with whenever he had been silly, worrying about something he needn't have. "Don't worry, Laguna. I'm not going to leave you here. I promise, okay?"

Laguna tried to smile back, but it seemed as if some required part was missinghe could move his lips, but he couldn't feel anything. "I wish you could meet my son." He didn't know why he said it.

Sukaru stood, brushing the dust off of his hands, smile fading like a mirage. "Come on."

-

The bar was as well-stocked as Laguna always remembered it.

Sukaru didn't trust the bread or fruit, but there were jars of oatmeal and honey and preserves, and a small carved wooden box with fragrant tea leaves in the back of the cupboard. He prepared the food with the speed and confidence of one who had done so many times before, and set it on the table before Laguna had even considered offering to help.

"Breakfast," he introduced it, as if it was nothing special.

"I must be dreamin'." Laguna stared in disbelief at the spread, shaking his head from side to side. "Where'd you learn to _cook_ like this?"

"Nowhere." Sukaru shrugged it off. "It's just oatmeal. Not that hard."

Laguna chuckled, already spooning down the first bites. "Raine always said I could burn toast."

"Yeah, but burning toast is easy. I've burned _water_ before."

Laguna laughedand surprised himself by laughing. He sipped at the teacareful not to scald himselfand ate, amazed at nothing at all.

Soon enough the food was gone, and he leaned back with the tea glass in hand. "Sukaru?" he began.

Sukaru glanced at him, face open and honest. "Yeah?"

"Would you tell me about your parents?"

Sukaru smiled distantly, looking deep down into his glass. "...I can't really remember them," he confessed. "Just storiesstories my sister told me. She's older than I am, you know. So it's just that, and this feeling I get sometimes..."

"Sometimes?"

"That it was better. That things used to be better than they are now." He drank. "I like to think my mother was pretty, and my father liked to laugh. But my father never wanted to stay here, not reallyhe wanted to travel the world, and tell the world about what he saw. You couldn't do that here. Everyone's just interested in their own little lives, their house and their garden and their family and the things they have done and the things they won't do and the things they won't admit to doing. My father wanted to see the world, and he vanished. And then my mother vanished, and my sister and I were left all alone." He shook his head. "...I guess I must sound crazy to you, coming back to look for them after all this time."

"No," Laguna said, staring into his own tea. "No, it doesn'tactually, you sound like" he swallowed. "Well. What happened to youyou sound like my son."

"You lost him?"

"...I had to." He swallowed again, staring at the play of light on the ripples and waves. "Years ago, this place was attacked, and theythey took someone close to me. So I had to go find her, and I never could come back. ...not until now."

"I'm sorry," Sukaru said faintly. "...for both of you."

"You look so much like him. You have so much in common" he swallowed hard. _Why can't you just **be** him? Why do you have to be so similar, but not the same? _"...I wish you could meet him."

"What would you do, if you saw him now? What would you tell him?"

Laguna stared down into his glass. The tea was the color of pale sunlight, of yellowing pasts. "...I don't know, really. I guessI guess I would tell him that I was sorry. That I never wanted to leave him for so long."

"Do you think he would listen?"

_I just try not to think._ "I don't know. ...would you?"

"I don't know."

A moment passed in silence.

"...I _wanted_ to come back for him!" Laguna burst, hand tightening on the glass so quickly and so sharply he was surprised it didn't shatter. "I _wish_ I could have! But there was always one crisis or another, and before I knew it seven years had passed and I couldn't find him any more... then seventeen, and when I saw him one more time I didn't know what to say. And then he was gone, and I don't knowI don't know if I can find him again, or if he's ever coming back"

Sukaru said nothing. Light skipped across the table as he swirled the tea.

"I wish I would have told him. I _should_ haveI should have done so many things differently"

The light continued to skip. "People make mistakes," Sukaru said.

"Yeah. I know. I just wishI wish _this_ didn't have to be one of them."

Light danced in silence.

"...yeah," Sukaru whispered. "I wish so, too."

-

-

The fog was lifting.

It was still present, still all-pervasive, but it was thinning. Laguna could see the fences and the empty flowerpots on the other side of the Town Square, hazy but undeniably there.

"I don't know where to keep searching," he remarked almost to himself.

"Laguna?"

"What?"

Sukaru was quiet, staring at him until Laguna glanced back. There was something in his eyesa soberness, a seriousness that gave Laguna pause.

"...what?"

"Maybe you should go see the grave."

Laguna staredthen winced away. "Why?"

"So you'll know for sure. If it's not _her _grave, then maybe she is waiting for you."

The other half of the reasoning hung in the air between them, unspoken. _And if it is her grave, you'll know everything you did here, the only reason you came here, was useless._

He swallowed. It was such a gamblebut it had been decided already, hadn't it? There was nothing he could do to _change_ that, now.

"...yeah. I guess we should."

"I can lead you if you don't know the way."

"I think I know it."

"Good. Let's go."

He stepped out into the fog, and Laguna followed him. Sukaru moved with purpose and resolveno trace of the hesitance Laguna felt, commanding without imposing. Laguna didn't question it as they moved across the Square.

He stepped on something, and it crunched like clay beneath his boot. He paused.

"Wait!" he turned, staring back at Raine's bar. It was bathed in a ghostly illumination, bright sun burning through the fog to color it a pure, luminous white. "...I want to get something before we go."

"All right." Sukaru made his way to a bench, settling into it. "I'll wait here for you."

"I won't be long," Laguna promised, and left him.

-

The room was exactly how he had left it, and he felt a pang of disappointment and he didn't know why.

Standing in the doorway, glancing back and forth, he wasn't quite sure what he was looking for. But he felt sure he was looking for somethingsome kind of clue, a key to the mystery that wrapped itself around the town. He walked into the room, idly turning a few things over, feeling them solid and real under his fingers, and wondered why that should be such an unexpected thing.

He was shuffling through the old papers, skimming the headlines with little thought for content, when he chanced a look at the bed. Its old, white headboard hadn't been maintained, and the paint was cracked and peelingbut that wasn't what he noticed.

He noticed that someone had scrawled something across it in a belligerent hand, in a thick dark pigment that could only be blood. It lurched and jilted across the wood, profane and obscene.

(**_R_AInE dIed _Ha_T_inG y_Ou, La_G_Una.**)

He approached it with the stabbing disbelief one might show to a sacrifice.

Something began to grow inside hima potent mixture of fear and pain, and hate followed itit swelled thick and dark inside him, overflowing with the taste of bile at the back of his throat. There was a thin trickle, nothing more than a suggestion of additional vandalism creeping beneath the sheets and the uneven blanket; he seized them and tore them from the bedframe, casting them across the room with callous disregard.

There was a mess of blood halfway between the head and the foot of the bed, splattered and old. It made a grisly pattern on the pristine sheets and Laguna couldn't decide if it reminded him more of rape or slaughter.

The ruins of the antique phonograph lay on the floor, the old batteries crackling and sparking. The sound flute shuddered, brief snaps of static angry in the air.

His entire body shook.

It was a lieof _course _it was a lie, the entire room was full of them, bolted and then unbolted, lonely and empty, with the old obituariesone of them had to be Raine's, he was sure, and that was a lie, too. Raine wasn't dead. She hadn't died hating him. She was still alive, still waiting for him somewhere, he knew that, the _letter _proved that

The letter had said she would be waiting by the window. Lies. All lies. But not _all_ of it could be a lie, or

He picked up the phonograph and hurled it into the bedhead. It exploded into parts and static, a wistful five-note pattern spasming through the destruction. _My last night here for you_

All lies, always lying, telling him things he couldn't_wouldn't_believe.

He grabbed the chair by the window and threw it at the headboard, and it shattered like glass without scratching the message. It still gaped at him, savoring his desperation, laughing at his pain.

He gripped the endtable and its papers in white-knuckled hands and raised it high above his head, pounding it down onto the ruin of splintered memories that did nothing to help him. He could hear it breaking, feel it cracking, but he was too caught up in the destruction

What would Raine have said, seeing him now?

He dropped it and shuddered to the floor, hands smeared with dust clawing at his mouth and face as if trying to feel what lay beneath. His eyes were pressed closed, but the message burned into his vision like a ghastly afterimage.

Splinters bit into his hands, and the blood where they stuck welled forth bright and terrible and new.

-

Sukaru regarded him curiously when he returned to the square. "Did you get what you wanted?"

Laguna couldn't even remember what that had been, any more. "There wasthere was"

"It's all right, Laguna," Sukaru interrupted him. "It'll be all right."

Laguna shook his head, stricken past speakingstricken past understanding.

Sukaru laid a hand on his arm. "Let's go."

-

The sun made a valiant effort, and streaked what limited vista there was with light. Sukaru lead him as he walked mindlessly, seeking out detail in the nothingness. Anything to keep his eyes from seeing the bedanythign to keep him from remembering.

There was a deer somewhere off the path, wreathed in fog. It jumpedit leaped higher than Laguna had ever seen a deer leap, and then vanished into the silver air. A crow called, interrupting rudely the silence of the hills.

"I haven't seen any monsters around lately," Laguna mused to himself.

"Caterchipillars and bite bugsthey don't like this kind of fog and light," Sukaru said, and for the first time Laguna realized that he had _never_ seen either of those.

"No, I meantthere were these _other_ things"

Sukaru looked over, eyes flat and quiet. "They looked like monsters to you?"

Laguna nearly choked.

Sukaru looked away, motioning to the hills. "This whole area used to be a sacred place," he said. "I don't know why, but II really like it here. It's so peaceful."

So peaceful. It had always been peacefulwhen he had proposed, when she had agreed, the picnics they had shared, the time he had spent stargazing with Ellonealways peaceful. It seemed nothing could change that.

He could see the grave already, all too soon. His step faltered, and Sukaru didn't miss it.

"I'll wait here," he offered. "You should go alone."

Laguna nodded, repeating false assurances and empty platitudes to steady his steps. The grave was high on a hill, just in the lea of the crestit waited for him, anticipation stamped in the shape of a stone as he ascended.

He knelt in a kind of silent worship.

The grave rested on the hill, a grey granite block in a sea of mist-capped green, and on the headstone was carved _Mrs. Raine Leonhart-Loire_.

She had died. She had died and been buried seventeen years ago.

He reached out to touch the engraving, shock spreading through him as from a bullet in his chest. His fingers never made it to the stonehe staggered back, lurching to his feet and stumbling backward and downward. "No. _No_"

"Laguna?" Sukaru started, rushing toward him. "_Laguna_!"

"It can'tshe can'tshe _can't_ be! _She **can't** be!_"

"Laguna, what is it?" Sukaru's voice as he hailed him was laced with all-inadequate concern.

"I lost her," he moaned. "What now? What do I have left?"

Sukaru lunged at him, catching his arms. "You have _some_ things. You have _me_."

Laguna wrenched himself away, retreating. The hurt, the utter disconsolate injury had to be stamped on his faceit was reflected in Sukaru's eyes. "I _lost_ them. I lost my _family_. My _family_!"

"No. No, Laguna, you didn't"

Laguna shook his head, making the world list and spin dizzily around him. "I don't understand. I don't _understand_..."

His eyes were open, wounded and deep, begging someone to tell him something he wanted desperately to hear.

Sukaru looked at him, eyes wide and open and pleading.

"I wanted to tell you somethingever since I saw you, I wanted to tell you"

_But what? Please, please, if it's_"Tell me. Please tell me."

"I never could. I never thought I could."

_Why?_ "Why?"

"It just _hurt_. You thoughtI don't know what you thought, that I was some stranger or something, someone just randomly here..."

_It can't be..._

"...but it's not that way. Laguna..." Sukaru's face begged understanding. "I _am_ your son."

_Don't believe it!_ his mind screeched at him, frantic and terrified at some unknown prospect. _Don't listen to him! He's Sukaru, not Squall, and he's nothing like him_

"I knew it," he said, and there were tears in his eyes.

"_Father..._" Sukaru staggered forward, wrapping his arms around Laguna and smothering a sob in his shoulder. "I missed you. I missed you and I needed you so much...!"

Tears were falling onto his rumpled shirt, and Laguna didn't know which were his and which had come from Sukaru. "I know. I'm sorry."

"Did you think I hated you? Did you think I'd be angry?"

It was like a dream, like the best dream ever come true at last. "I"

Something was wrong.

Sukaru's shoulderblades were twisting back against each other, and he had stopped crying.

"Did you _think_," he snarled, "that I could _ever_ forgive you for what you've done?"

And with strength that no _human_ could possess, he heaved Laguna upward and threw him against the grave.

The world exploded into stars, impossible colors bleeding and bursting against the inside of his eyelids. Through the miasma he could see Sukaru advancing, teeth set in a snarl and fingers rigid like claws. Laguna tried to scramble away, backing over the gravestone and kicking up dirt as he did so.

The fog was thickening around them, alive with some palpable evil. Cold tendrils like dead caresses brushed across his neck, down his shirt, around his knuckles and against his throat.

"Did you think I could _love_ you? That there was _any_ going back?" Sukaru lunged, hands finding Laguna's collar and twisting it as he struggled. Sukaru's knuckles were driving the cloth into his windpipe, and all Laguna could think was that his breath smelled sweet and sick, like rotting flowers.

"Please" he managed, and it could charitably be called a whimper.

"No. _No_ please. There is no forgivenessfor _you_." He twisted, and Laguna flew threw the airtumbling, landing in the harsh grass that tore like thorns and nettles, clawing at him with some inspired vengeance.

Sukaru was coming closer.

He scrambled, fought to get away, crawling in a blind panic across the hard earth, heart racing and fingers seeking any hope for salvation in the biting vegetation. He couldn't stand. He tried and fell, stumbling and tumbling.

Skipping across withered grass, his fingers encountered the smooth grip of his machine gun.

He twisted away from it, recoiling as if bitten. He could not_would_ notshoot his own son.

_He's not your son._

Sukaru was very near, cloaked in the mist like a soldier with his footsteps cracking the weeds. Laguna rolled away, hoping for another second, another _moment_, in which to regain his footing and flee.

_There has to be something around here. A stick. A clump of loose dirt I can throw in his eyes_

Once again, his hand came into contact with his gun, and _so much _of him wanted to take it.

_No! NoNoNo!_

Sukaru was on him, hands on his shoulders, hauling him back up toward the grave with force enough to kill. Laguna twisted, assuming wild contortions in order to escape his grip.

His hand brushed against the gun.

He flailed. His hand brushed against the gun.

_NO!_

His mind screamed it. The rest of him screamed _yes_.

The grave was underfoot now and Sukaru was raising him up only to slam him down onto the stone and Laguna without thinking while thinking far too much put the gun into his chest and pulled the trigger back and shook  
and _shook_  
_and **shook**_ with the reverb and

and Sukaru _screamed_, and it wasn't a scream any man could have made. Perhaps, though, it could have come from a childsomeone very young, lost, and dying all alone.

Laguna fell and his head smacked against the gravestone anyway, and for a bare second he swore that it was welcoming him.

Sukaru was falling, and the fog was tinted red around him. He hit limply the ground next to the headstone, staring at Laguna from dead, empty eyes.

"Father..."

The word rattled out of his lips, dry and faint and as faraway as his words in the mausoleum. Laguna struggled to his feet, even though the world seemed to be spinning and melting around him. He sincerely believed that his head would split in two, peeling back to expose grey matter to the freezing fog. "...no. No. I'm not."

"Father..."

"I'm sorry! I'm _sorry_, all right! You don'tyou don't _know_ how much I wanted to come back"

"Father..."

Laguna wanted to scream, if only to drown out the word Sukaru repeated like a mindless broken record, jamming it over and over like a knife into his brain. "Shut up!"

"Father..."

"Shut up! Shut up! _Shut up_!"

"Father..."

He closed his eyes, raised the gun, and fired a single bullet that had the sound and thunder of every bullet he had ever fired captured and bound within it, and as the fog flash-froze around him the world tore itself apart.

A second later he opened his eyes, and the cataclysm was over.

Sukaru lay on the ground with his face blown in, white frost edging his ruined features. Blood had splattered and frozenon the gravestone, on the ground.

Laguna flexed his fingers and dropped the gun. There was frost on itthere was frost everywhere. It bit into his face, his joints, but he couldn't really feel it.

He gulped bitter air. "_Sukaru!"_

He fell to his knees.

There was a cold, cutting wind, and it was tugging at the edges of Sukaru's coat. It was pulling them back to reveal a torn bit of paper, fluttering weakly. With numb fingers, he took it.

It was crisp and yellowing, with a familiar script upon it. He pulled Raine's letter from his own pocket, fitting the torn edges together.

A perfect match. A complete letter, finished and signedand old.

Unfeeling fingers brushed across the lines in silent reverence, as if he could absorb by touch what failing reason refused to accept. He read it through to the end, and began to cry.

His tears were freezing in the freezing air, but he had not the will to know it.

-

-

-

_In restless dreams, I see you.  
Laguna...  
You promised you'd come back for me, but you never did.  
I wonder if you even remember.  
It feels so alone now.  
I'm waiting for you.  
Do you still remember the chapel by the edge of town?  
Or our little room, with the window that overlooks the garden?  
It's broken now, did you know?  
I can't ever seem to get it replaced...  
I miss you.  
I can't bear to think that you might forget.  
I have so many secrets to tell you...  
So many things I need to say.  
I keep hoping you'll come back.  
I might not have another chance...  
I'm so afraid that by the time you get this, I'll already be dead.  
That's what the doctors seem to think.  
I'm so afraid of what will happen to Ellone, and to our son.  
I'm so afraid that you'll never know he's yours.  
He's beautiful, did you know that?_

_Laguna...  
I love you.  
No one in this town is willing to forgive you, but I will.  
Even if you've forgotten me, even if you hate me...  
I don't mind.  
I still remember the times we shared.  
The laughter...  
The warmth...  
The love you always gave...  
I hope this letter finds yousomehow.  
I hope it finds you well.  
I'm sorryI'm so sorry for everything.  
But I just couldn't bear to leave without saying_

_Laguna,  
You made me happy._

_I love you._

_Goodbye._


	5. A Hole Here

It was cold. 

It was cold and the wind was howling, and his knees and knuckles were stiff, and the headstone was rough against his cheek and the grass was sharp against his neck.

And Raine was dead, and had died waiting for him.

And Sukaru was dead, and had died calling his name.

It was cold.

The air was dry and freezing and had stabbed into him with every sob, and nothing could warm it. Tears had turned to ice. Grief had turned to lead, and it was dense and awful in his stomach. He was worn out, worn thin, and the wind was singing a lullaby to close his eyes. It would be so easy just to sleep. To slip into that cool darkness and let it consume him, to believe that it had all been a dream--that the bruises on his shoulder did not pain, that he had never really been here or never really left. So easy.

He stood on legs that cramped and shot with a muted hurt. The grass whimpered in its soft rustle, begging his return.

He had always been returning.

Back to the fog-coked town, back to the old dusty bar, back to the bed and the dress in the window and the darkness that followed his words. There was nowhere to look but back. Nowhere to go. Nothing he could do.

He stared at the grave and it stared back, bloodspots in the frost like despairing eyes. They were watching, shivering in the chill. The grass was crackling. The wind was blowing. Someone was laughing.

...someone was _laughing_.

He turned, sick with betrayal, and looked over the frozen fog that gilded the hilltops silver. Familiar forms and familiar faces--perfect, just as he remembered, not the slight air of _off_ness he had seen in--

_(No. I'm not gonna believe anything, any more.)_ Because Raine was dead, and had died calling his name. Had she died hating him? _No one in this town is willing to forgive you..._

Someone was calling his name.

Ellone (his daughter, not a _real_ daughter, but wasn't it close enough? _Sukaru was not your son--_) was coming down the hill toward him, smiling and waving as if everything was all right. Didn't she remember Raine? Didn't she remember how he had--

_It's all right_, his mind whispered, and it was Sukaru's voice. _It'll be all right._

_(I condemned him to die.)_

Wherever he put his hand down, there had been the gun.

Ellone slowed as she approached. She didn't see the corpse. She didn't see the frost. She was looking up, and a shadow was passing over her.

He looked up as well. The great sky bulk of Garden was groaning above them, ring scattering false light as it turned. Did they have graveyards in that bastion of war? Where did they bury the ones who died--and they did die, marching out to fight for causes that had never been their own, pushed by some invisible hand, some desperate man, some blank command issued without expertise or knowledge. Where did they bury those abandoned to their fate?

He was kneeling by the gravestone. Sukaru was lying beside him. There was a look of betrayal in his blown-in face.

_I love you_, Raine had said. _I just couldn't bear to leave without saying--_

"I love you," he told the Garden and the ghosts that followed it. It moaned a mechanical moan and left him. "I love you," he told Sukaru without looking at him. _I loved you_.

_This is the hill, all covered with fog  
That buried the girl with the golden dog..._

The old nursery rhyme. The nursery had been lost long ago.

_That chased the cat with the scruffy mane  
That caught the rat as he ate the grain  
That was stored in the room with the jaunty tilt--_

"--that sat in the cottage Jack once built."

_You're chasing shadows, Laguna._ Shadows and memories that all lead him back here, to the town that would never forgive him, to the bar that would never forget him. _I have killed too many, including buchubuchus and bunbuns that Commander Ellone oh-so-hates._

He reached deliberately to the grass beside him, and felt the firearm from bole to butt. It was still hot with the heat of execution.

_(I left him, I sent him away, I killed him. I killed him.)_

Garden was passing before his eyes.

Ellone didn't see the blood on his hands or the gun they held. Ellone didn't see the grave. And as he knelt, back turned toward her, she didn't see him smiling.

_It'll be all right_.

"Raine," he whispered.

There was the faint scent of flowers on the breeze.


End file.
